St. Paul Park mayor's cafe vandalised

• Park Cafe damage

A camera phone photo taken by St. Paul Park Mayor Keith Franke shows the damage caused by a number of large rocks that were thrown through one of the cafe's windows in the early morning hours of Memorial Day.

Talk about it

St. Paul Park police are investigating an act of vandalism in the early morning hours of Memorial Day at a popular Broadway Avenue café owned by the city’s mayor.

Police were called to the Park Café shortly before 5 a.m. Monday after someone threw at least six large rocks through a double-paned exterior window on the side of the building.

The eatery is owned by St. Paul Park Mayor Keith Franke, who said he had left the café at around 1 a.m. that morning before a call from one of his cooks alerted him to the damage at around 4:45 a.m.

“Just glass everywhere,” said Franke, describing the scene when he arrived at the restaurant while standing beside the now boarded window on Tuesday.

The broken window had showered the interior of the cafe with shards of glass that reached as far as the restaurant’s front door, Franke said, roughly 30 to 40 feet away. The cost of the damage was unclear, he said.

Franke said he believes the rocks were more than just random acts vandalism – the number that were thrown through the café’s window indicated to him someone was trying to break in to the building. The jagged manner in which the double-paned window broke likely kept out any would-be intruders, he said.

No items were stolen from the restaurant.

St. Paul Park police are investigating, said Police Chief Mike Monahan, but have no suspects. A security camera provided no usable images, he said, and a resident of an apartment located above the restaurant was out of town, Franke said.

Monahan wasn’t ready to declare the incident more than just late-night vandalism.

“It’s unclear whether it was (an attempted burglary) or just an act of vandalism,” he said Tuesday.

Tags: st paul park, crime and courts, news, updates, crime